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HolyTransaction adds support for Bitcoin Lightning Network

HolyTransaction supports Bitcoin Lightning Network

Today, we are pleased to announce that HolyTransaction is adding support for swapping to Bitcoin on Lightning Network and thus introducing the ability to deposit and withdraw using Lightning Network.

By adding this capability, HolyTransaction is set to revolutionise the speed, cost and security of depositing and withdrawing Bitcoin on to its platform.

Lightning Network is a software stack which sits on top of the Bitcoin blockchain and, as the name implies, ensures faster and cheaper transactions for its users.

Other than super fast speed and lower fees users will notice a new format of address called invoice when they send or receive Bitcoin via the Lightning Network. The team at HolyTransaction reported that the integration has been successful and hassle free.

Lightning Network brings three essential product benefits to the HolyTransaction exchange:

Instant Payments. With the use of smart contracts security across the network is much higher and because the stack is built ‘on top’ of the Bitcoin network no transaction confirmations are required. This makes instant payments super fast, super secure and, of course, super cheap.

Scalability. The massive upscale in transactions per second eclipses any traditional legacy payment rail on the market today. Furthermore, payment ‘with click’ becomes a true reality as the need for financial custodians are eliminated.

Low Cost. Because Lightning Network does not interact directly with legacy Bitcoin infrastructure itself Lightning Network enables transaction with incredibly low fees. This in turn will stimulate economic growth in new and emerging markets.

In real terms this means Bitcoin deposits and withdrawals on HolyTransaction will be much faster and much cheaper when using Lightning Network.

At the time of press average costs for sending a Bitcoin transaction currently stand at around $2 with confirmation times of around 10 minutes. This clearly has limitations. However, a Lightning Network enabled transaction will cost less than $0.01 and take somewhere in the region of 1-3 seconds.

Adopting Lightning Network will make HolyTransaction more attractive for users who wish to send transactions with added security at much lower cost and super fast speed. HolyTransaction is happy to report that Lightning Network has been integrated for both desktop and mobile application versions.

Lightning Network was envisioned in 2015 and has seen significant growth throughout 2021 which has lead to it being regarded as the most popular layer 2 scaling solution on the market for Bitcoin today. With continued adoption Lightning Network may just help to finally realise the original Bitcoin goal of providing a scalable, fast and cheap financial payments network to the world.

The team at HolyTransaction believe the adoption of the Lightning Network is the logical step in the development of the platform. Lightning Network adoption will enable HolyTransaction to continue to provide a first class crypto trading experience and offer competitive fees with super fast finality times.

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Bitcoin Cash: HolyTransaction shares its position about the fork

Tomorrow is August 1st, the long-awaited date for the Bitcoin-blockchain upgrade. That’s why you are asking us: what’s about HolyTransaction and Bitcoin Cash?

This upgrade, in fact, will cause a hard fork and so the creation of a new chain (and so a new digital currency) called Bitcoin Cash. This will:

  • Increase the block size to 8 MB;
  • Remove SegWit, a code change that might activate on the bitcoin blockchain by the end of August.

HolyTransaction and Bitcoin Cash

So, our users are asking if HolyTransaction will support Bitcoin Cash within the multicurrency wallet.

HolyTransaction, in fact, would like to announce that should UAHF choose to increase the Bitcoin block size on August 1st, our customer platform will not support the new blockchain or coin on that date.

Due to technical complexities, time and quality assurance needed to implement a second bitcoin ruleset and blockchain we will not support it.

We currently consider Bitcoin Cash as another cryptocurrency, though Bitcoin Cash’s transaction history would be the same as bitcoin’s .

HolyTransaction supports UASF

A few days ago, we shared a blog post in support of UASF or User Activated Soft Fork.

It is a system for the activation of a soft fork that might occur on a specified time enforced by full nodes, a concept that is also called “economic majority”.

In the past years, a UASF was successfully developed to activate the P2SH soft fork (BIP16).

Instead, currently, the UASF is combined with the so-called SegWit activation in the BIP148 proposal.

Click here to read more about UASF.

We know that some users are curious to see what happens with Bitcoin Cash, but we are currently not supporting this altcoin.

 

Let’s see what happen and happy trading!

Open your free digital wallet here to store your cryptocurrencies in a safe place.

Amelia Tomasicchio
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UASF Bitcoin: a Crypto Guide for Beginners and not

Yesterday we published the image below on Facebook, related to UASF Bitcoin we support. But what does it mean?

uasf bitcoin

What is UASF Bitcoin?

UASF is an abbreviation that stands for User Activated Soft Fork.

It’s a mechanism for the activation of a soft fork that might occur on a specified time enforced by full nodes, a concept that is also called “economic majority”.

In the past years, a UASF was successfully developed to activate the P2SH soft fork (BIP16).

Instead, currently, the UASF is combined with the so-called SegWit activation in the BIP148 proposal you can read here: github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0148.mediawiki.

What is a MASF?

MASF means Miner Activated Soft Fork. It’s a system by which miners can trigger the activation of a soft fork when a majority decides to execute an upgrade. This allows a faster activation of the soft fork, leaving full nodes to upgrade when they decide to do it.

This mechanism is a tradeoff because it puts trust in the hash power,  enforcing the new rules. Conversely, it can cause invalid chains. This was the case with BIP66.

What is BIP148?

BIP148 is a UASF designed to run the current SegWit MASF deployment in order to activate it in all the existing SegWit capable node software (80% + at this time).

From August 1st, 2017, miners have to signal their readiness for SegWit creating blocks with the version bit 1.

What is Segwit?

SegWit is an upgrade to the bitcoin blockchain that might be able to solve the so-called block size debate, by increasing the capacity of each block of the digital currency chain in order to allow more transactions in less time and with fewer fees to be executed and registered on the blockchain itself.

Right now, Bitcoin supports up to 2000 transactions per block in 10 minutes, but SegWit will be able to double this capacity up to 4000 transactions.

Read this infographic to know more about SegWit.

 

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Amelia Tomasicchio
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Bitcoin Price Analysis and SegWit

While Bitcoin price is experiencing a new growth after the almost 50% drop from its all-time high, a few analysts of the crypto market suggest that bitcoin price at $4000 is in the air.

And this moment seems to come sooner than expected.

“When added to the professed agreement for major players to work together on the Bitcoin scaling issue starting September – if it becomes a reality, the price could see between $4,000 and $5,000 before the year ends,” said an expert to Cointelegraph.

2017 has been a good year for bitcoin price, as it traded at about $950 back in January and it reached its new all-time high a few months ago in June with a value of $3011: this means that bitcoin price grew of more than 3000% in a six-months period.

Compared to the all-time high we quoted above, the current price decrease is maybe due to the uncertainty around the upcoming SegWit activation that will take place on August 1st, 2017.

For those who are unfamiliar with this, SegWit is a new upgrade to the Bitcoin blockchain that will increase the block size to support more transactions and allow a faster confirmation for transactions.

At the moment, the blockchain supports up to 2000 transactions per block in 10 minutes and SegWit will double this capacity to 4000 transactions.

Also, Segwit2x will increase the size of each block from 1MB to 2MB.

SegWit will be implemented on August 1s, while it is not sure yet if Segwit2x will be implemented too.

That said, the real reason of uncertainty is caused by the hard fork needed to implement SegWit.

This might create two different chains in a similar way to what happened to Ethereum in 2016 with the DAO and Ethereum Classic.

Not a problem for the Bitcoin price

According to many experts in the industry, while this event might create panic sell and uncertainty within the community, will not be a real problem in the next future.

Kumar Gaurav of Cashaa explained to Cointelegraph:

“When looking at 2017 so far, it still has been a good year for Bitcoin, starting just below 1000$ and now standing just below $2,000. Whether and to which extent this overall trend will continue will be seen more clearly after some crucial dates such as 1st August. If 80% of the Bitcoin community adopts the updates all should be fine. It seems most likely this will be reached, as the current signaling of intended support is at 87.8 percent, an increase from 83.28 percent in May. Comparable to when in May, following the New York agreement on SegWit2x, Bitcoin reached an all-time high of $2,160, it can reach new all-time highs after a successful activation as Bitcoin will be more attractive again and bring users of other cryptocurrencies back to Bitcoin.”

Bitcoin-based ICOs

Another reason that might be influenced the price is the growing number of Bitcoin-based ICOs or Initial Coin Offerings.

ICOs managers might have cashed out during those days and this drove the prices because a huge amount of bitcoin appeared on the market.

Open your free digital wallet here to store your cryptocurrencies in a safe place.

Amelia Tomasicchio
Accepted

Litecoin Segwit has been finally approved

Litecoin Segwit has been finally implemented, so this long-debate to change to change the digital currency network can be said to be closed now.

Originally intended to improve the bitcoin blockchain, Segwit – or Segregated Witness – had to solve the so-called block size debate, but it has been used on the lesser known litecoin chain, with some in the community that believes that it will help to finally have a quick implementation on the bitcoin network too.

Litecoin Segwit: how does it work?

Segregated Witness, in fact, is a new system that will allow litecoin to improve its block size, by modifying how transaction data is stored by the blockchain itself.

The change was first locked-in two weeks ago, when the proposal reached the 75% threshold level.

Then, the community had to wait two more weeks (8,064 blocks) to ensure that the upgrade approval was consistent.

After that, yesterday (on May 10th) the change was officially activated at block 1201536.

What does it mean?

Litecoin users can now start using a new kind of network, and there has been at least one transaction so far.

Anyway, several supporters are thrilled about the new techs that can now be created on the Segwit-supported network.

For example, the Lightning Network could boost litecoin transactions by million times; thanks to Segwit it can now be used to move real money.

Developer Loshan T explained to CoinDesk:

“I think today will be a great day for pushing more awesome tech into Litecoin. With SegWit activated on litecoin’s mainnet, I cannot wait until we deploy confidential transactions, Lightning Networks, MAST and Schnorr signatures.”

Unfortunately, these projects are early stage right now, but developers from the Lightning Labs seem thinking that it is too early to talk about sending money over an experimental network, so they plan to continue to develop the chain.

The future is unwritten

It not so clear where the Segwit activation will lead to or what role Litecoin will have in the next future.

Loshan explained that some in the community are skeptical about litecoin needs of the Lightning Network tech because litecoin blocks are not full yet, but they would like to have trustless cross-chain transactions between bitcoin and litecoin as a potential Lightning use case; and developer believes could be a benefit for both the digital currencies.

Anyway, at the moment, the Litecoin blockchain seems to work properly, without any issue, even after the Segwit activation.

Open your free digital wallet here to store your cryptocurrencies in a safe place.

Amelia Tomasicchio
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A new proposal for the Bitcoin block size debate: UASF

Amid the Bitcoin block size debate, an anomymous developer recently talked about a project related to a new solution called UASF or user-activated soft fork.

Many in the community are skeptical about this proposal, but there are enough circumstantial evidences to back it up, and a new movement is growing in the hopes of pushing through the change that miners are now being accused of blocking.

Usually, miners are tasked with pushing through a similar fix. But some in the bitcoin community are calling for a different (and older) method of making a change to bitcoin based on support of the known “economic majority”, instead of miner support.

Coinkite founder Rodolfo Novak, an advocate for this new born movement, explained that it aims at correcting perceived inequities that used to dominate the scaling debate.

“Miners trying to centralize bitcoin is an unacceptable thing. It goes against what bitcoin is supposed to be. This UASF is really like saying, ‘No, we control bitcoin, not you.'”

However, UASF-related support seems to be increasing.

Even if the code is not safe yet, a few users are now supporting it with their nodes.

Node support for this change has grown to 4.8%, or by about six times.

“On a technical level, signaling it that way does absolutely nothing, it does however help the case on a social level and prevents users from running an outdated version of the code when enforcing starts,” developer Damian Mee commented.

Due to UASF system, it might be necessary to have an explicit support from the “economic majority,” or exchanges, wallets, and other bitcoin players.

This support is so far at about 6% since the BIP was put out on March 12th.

However, a sizable percentage of bitcoin nodes are running Bitcoin Core, and SegWit, which Mee thinks is a good indicator that the so-called “economic majority” supports SegWit, and the UASF version.

The code is backwards-compatible, so the 80% of nodes that are now ready for SegWit.

That said, we have to tell that the code implementation hasn’t already fully tested or reviewed.

The original activation for SegWit was put at October 1st, 2017, but recently it was moved to August 1st.

Updates: UASF proposal has been changed. Click here to read more about it.

Open your free digital wallet here to store your cryptocurrencies in a safe place.

Amelia Tomasicchio
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Bitcoin block size: UASF updates its proposal

A controversial Bitcoin block size proposal has been upgraded.

UASF, in fact, is a new idea proposed by a pseudonymous contributor called Shaolingfry.

She/he wants to solve the bitcoin block size debate with a user activated soft fork (UASF), a possible method arount the actual deadlock over the Segregated Witness (Segwit) solution.

Right now, the need for a majority consensus in order to make a decision means  that any mining pool with enough hashing power has the veto power over any proposal; this might be the reason why SegWit is tardy to arrive.

Conversely, UASF wants to bypass the veto power and put the decision only into the hands of bitcoin’s users.

After a first general UASF proposal, Shaolinfry suggested a change – BIP148 – in order to moving the power out of the miners’ decision and give it to the “economic majority”.

Gregory Maxwell and other bitcoin developers refused this proposal because it could undermine the bitcoin blockchain stability.

“We should use the least disruptive mechanisms available and the BIP148 proposal does not meet that test,” he wrote

For this reason, Shaolinfry announced he/she is working on a redraft of the proposal to address some of the concerns suggested by Maxwell and other developers.

Shaolinfry published an announcement post saying that the reason for this changes is related to technical criticisms of how UASF would upgrade the network.

“BIP 148 is certainly not what a normal UASF would or should look like. While support for BIP 148 is surprisingly high, there are definitely important players who support UASF in general but do not like BIP148 approach.”

This revised proposal suggests the use of BIP8, but this concerns how soft forks are implemented.

Segwit and BIP8

Right now, if the 95% hashrate support for the Segregated Witness option is not reached by November 15th, the proposal will be discarded by default.

Anyway, the technical changes made in a proposal (BIP8) would be automatically locked in at the end of the time period, even if they could be adopted sooner.

Shaolinfry’s idea is that after the November 15th, a UASF SegWit proposal will be edited according to the BIP8 changes.

This means that the bitcoin community would have 1 year to prepare the upgrading of a UASF, removing the possible destabilizing effect of a short-term.

“I believe this approach would satisfy the more measured approach expected for bitcoin and does not have the issues Maxwell brought up about BIP148.”

 

Open your free digital wallet here to store your cryptocurrencies in a safe place.

Amelia Tomasicchio
Accepted

Litecoin Segwit: how it is driving the prices

Maybe because of the recent Litecoin Segwit support, this digital currency price set a new high yesterday, reaching a value of $11.42, its highest price since May 2014.

We cannot define it a cryptocurrency pump, but the market seems to answer to the technical changes in the network.

This price growth, in fact, could be explained thanks to the almost reached the 75% support level needed in order to activatate the Litecoin Segwit (Segregated Witness), or a scaling solution that will improve blocks capacity.

Right now, in fact, just over 70% of miners were giving their support for the Litecoin Segwit.

Even if at press time, Litecoin price declined of about 67%, litecoin traded as high as $11.32 today up nearly 40% in one day, according to CoinMarketCap.

On March 30th, litecoin price increased of about 70% and, always according to Coinmarketcap data, its 24-hour volume passed $250m today.

Litecoin SegWit support

These important new Litecoin highs have coincided with the almost reached support level needed for activating the Litecoin SegWit.

First designed to be used on the Bitcoin blockchain, SegWit would increase the block capacity by modifying how transaction data is stored by the blockchain itself.

Once reached, the support level will have to remain at or above the 75% threshold level for 8,064 blocks (almost two weeks) before SegWit can officially be activated.

The litecoin price reached $50 in late 2013, but it has traded below $20 since early 2014.

Click here to read more about SegWit and a new Bitcoin potential fork.

Open your free digital wallet here to store your cryptocurrencies in a safe place.

Amelia Tomasicchio
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Bitcoin Price today Breaches $750

The Bitcoin price today keeps growing up over the value of $750.

This is the sixth time that bitcoin price breaches $750 since mid-November, as revealed by the CoinDesk USD Bitcoin Price Index.

Bitcoin was subject to much volatility during a low trading volume, as CoinMarketCap data showed that during the session, the 24-hour trading volume was roughly $90 million.

This was a lower trading activity compared to last month, when it reached $174 million on November 3rd and $173 million on November 17th.

The digital currency price passed the $750 value several times during November.

The Bitcoin price first breached $750 on 17th November, maintaining this level for a short time, then moving back to a lower value even under $ 700.

Also, it is important to remember that the bitcoin price today exceeded $750 and it did the same many times recently, but it never breached $755 during the last few weeks.

In India the bitcoin price exploded and last week it reached almost $1000 as the country tried to exchange value via Zebpay and Unocoin.

According to Coindesk, the bitcoin price today also reached a growing value of Eur 724, and

2016 has been a great year for Bitcoin. For example, scalability innovations like Segregated Witness have been introduced to the Bitcoin community, many positive Blockchain tests have taken place and many new markets have turned to Bitcoin as a new method of payment.

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Amelia Tomasicchio
Segregated Witness HolyTransaction Infographic

Infographic: What is Segregated Witness?

What is segregated witness infographic HolyTransaction

 

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